Anna Akhmatova – lecture/performance by Graham Fawcett and Sue Aldred

November 15, 2018

The Treehouse hosted another stimulating and fascinating event and we were treated as always to Graham’s erudition and wit, and Sue’s beautiful reading voice.

Anna Akhmatova lived through two world wars, two revolutions and Stalin’s purges, and never stopped writing, suffering, loving. Her output is extraordinary. Despite being intensely personal, her published work was deemed anti-revolutionary and she, her family, many of her friends and fellow writers were persecuted (and some killed) because of it. And in the 1940s her poems came under attack because ‘decadent’ and ‘vulgar’ and therefore against Soviet culture and literature. Akhmatova wrote much more than what was published at the time. She fought to have her son released from prison and out of fear of further danger to him – as well as herself – everything she created was committed to memory (her own and others’) until danger finally passed. She died in 1966, recognised the world over as ‘the one who kept the Russian word alive.’

Events

TUESDAY MARCH 4 at West Greenwich Library, at 7.30
“In His Own Voice: Geoffrey’s Grigson’s Poetry”
A special evening on the poetry and the creative, colourful and influential life of Geoffrey Grigson (1905-1985). With his daughter Caroline Grigson, grandson Joe Banks and poets Graham High, Blake Morrison, and poet and editor John Greening.

Free event with refreshments (donations welcome) and books on sale. Texts will be projected on screen. Doors open at 7pm for a 7.30 start.

Geoffrey Grigson lived and worked through amazing times, culturally and politically, and was a prolific poet, writer, critic and editor. At the centre of English intellectual life, he knew the poetry grandees of his days and greatly admired those of the past. When he was only 27, he founded the bi-monthly journal ‘New Verse’, thus becoming hugely influential in the poetry world. He wrote over 500 poems himself, and on March 4, 1968 he recorded a number of them, which we’re going to hear in the course of the evening (exactly 57 years later!) – as well as many stories about him and his life. Other works have been selected and will be read by poets Blake Morrison, Graham High, John Greening (who also edited an anthology of Grigson’s works), by Grigson’s daughter Caroline Banks, Frances High and myself.

TUESDAY MARCH 25 at West Greenwich Library – ‘Mica Press launch: new poetry from Rosie Johnston, Michael Vince and Antony Johae.’ With Nayma Chanchoun, Michael Foley and Leslie Bell.

TUESDAY MAY 13 at West Greenwich Library – ‘Maggie and Maggie’. Same name, different voices: poetry from Maggie Butt and Maggie Harris.

TUESDAY JUNE 24 at West Greenwich Library – ‘Telltale Poets: Sarah Barnsley, Robin Houghton and Peter Kenny’